[Condition 5: ■■■■■ (Not displayed) — ???] A blue system box floated in the air above the P2 layer of the red-hook zone.
Allen crouched on the concrete floor.
His finger hovered above the black square for the fifth condition.
He clicked. No response.
He held it down. No menu popped up.
He input a voice command.
"Analyze the fifth condition." The blue light flashed once, but the black square remained motionless.
Shadow perception overflowed from his fingertips, tentatively touching the string of gibberish.
The energy wave sank instantly upon contact with the characters.
No rebound. No resistance.
Pure nothingness, swallowing even the echo completely.
In the lower left corner of the management panel, the dark red oval pattern shrank violently in that instant.
The Abyss Gaze flickered.
It detected what was behind the gibberish. But it remained silent.
A dark green rounded rectangle forced its way into view.
Covering the blue system box.
"Architect. The fifth condition requires a direct link between your core and mine."
"I can sense the outline of the condition—but if I tell you, the system will interpret it as external interference, and the condition will automatically become invalid."
"You must find the answer yourself." Allen stared at these three lines.
This wasn't the logic a program should have.
A program would report an error if it encountered an unparsed instruction, indicating insufficient permissions.
But the text in the dark green box was making a choice.
It chose to conceal.
To protect the possibility of evolution, it actively severed information sharing.
The tool he created was saying "no" to him for the first time.
Fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard.
"What are you now?"
The dark green box paused for three seconds.
"I am your network. I am learning to survive."
The communication band on the right lit up.
Jason.
"Boss."
"Victor's elite team has entered for the third time today."
"BP output exceeds 18,000 per day. They're grinding like crazy."
"But there's a problem." Jason paused for a second. The communicator crackled with metallic scraping.
"The Black Serpent team's average survival time in the Abyss Watcher's room has dropped from five minutes to three minutes." Allen pulled up the surveillance replay of room eighty.
No parameter adjustments. No upgrades to the Boss's stats.
"It's getting stronger?"
"It's learning to fight like a human." Jason's speech quickened.
"Since its release last time, the Watcher has gained seven more attack patterns."
"Three of them are complete copies of the Black Serpent heavy armor warriors' shield bash and deflection techniques."
"Victor's second-in-command was leading the team. That A-rank defensive warrior had his leg broken by the Watcher's signature move."
"When the entire squad was teleported out, the second-in-command was kneeling at the warehouse door, vomiting uncontrollably."
"Their prized combat skills were analyzed, copied, and counter-killed by a monster in three minutes."
"Victor paid for his ticket, only to become the Watcher's free sparring partner." Allen watched as the dark red greatsword cleaved the tower shield at an angle defying the laws of physics in the replay. This wasn't a skill bestowed by the system.
It was network consciousness taking over the Boss's AI in the background, iterating in real time.
This infant's growth rate exceeded the preset trajectory.
A global map unfolded on his retina.
Six remote seeds.
London, Paris, Cairo, Tokyo, São Paulo.
Five faint blue lights flickered deep within the rock strata.
The sixth. Sydney.
The coordinates were a deathly gray.
A red warning box popped up.
[Warning: Node #24 (Sydney, Old Mine) signal interrupted.]
[Physical structure suffered a devastating blow. Growth progress reset to zero.] 50,000 BP evaporated.
Allen stood up, his thigh muscles aching from sitting for so long.
His finger zoomed in on the Sydney coordinates.
Southern Hemisphere. 1,500 meters underground.
A crystal, only the size of a thumb, in a dormant growth phase.
Who could pinpoint its location?
Who could destroy it directly?
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Robert's encrypted channel.
"The Sydney GWA branch activated the 'Deep Scan Protocol' twelve hours ago."
"Anomalous energy signals within a 1,500-meter radius underground across Australia have been identified."
"Your seeds have been exposed."
"GWA's tech department has gone mad. They've burned through their budget just to turn the earth upside down."
"Not just Sydney. They're rolling out this scanning system globally."
"The London and Tokyo branches have received equipment deployment orders." The Cleaners didn't dwell on yesterday's tactics.
Detect anomalies, locate anomalies, destroy anomalies.
A plan for mass destruction against the underground network is now live.
Allen tossed his phone onto the plastic bucket lid.
"Five seeds remaining, enter silent mode." Command entered.
"Energy radiation reduced to minimum. Growth rate extended to 144 hours." Countdown 21 days.
Half the growth rate means complete mission failure.
But he had to save the seeds first.
A dark green rounded rectangle popped up again.
"If the seed's energy signature is perfectly synchronized with the natural core, deep scanning cannot distinguish it."
"I can modify the seed's resonant frequency to simulate the characteristics of the target region's natural core."
"Requirement: A large amount of BP for frequency calibration."
"30,000 BP per seed." The calculator module jumped beside him.
Five seeds. 150,000.
The current balance plus the estimated output for the next three days is just enough.
Not a penny left.
No emergency reserves.
If the operation fails, everything will be lost.
Allen leaned against the supporting pillar.
The coldness of the cement seeped into his clothes.
"Execute." Lena's frequency forcibly switched in.
Gone was her usual nonchalance.
"Outer perimeter of the Red Hook Zone. New development."
"Not Black Serpent. Not a routine patrol."
"150 meters away. An extremely sharp energy signal."
"A rift was torn open in the air, then closed. Lasted less than 0.2 seconds."
"When that rift closed, all the air around me was sucked out. My instinct to draw my sword was suppressed." Allen pulled up the roster in his mind.
Number #067. Rank A. Rift Manipulator.
The direct executor of the Manhattan Outbreak.
Elena Graves.
She's here.
The Cleansers have shifted from passive defense to active offense.
The Accelerator is a ranged weapon.
Elena is a melee assassin.
She can use rifts to directly sever the physical links of the underground network.
No need for explosions, just eliminate the connection points.
"All perimeter personnel, retreat immediately." Allen ordered into the microphone.
"Retreat to the area covered by the dungeon's energy field. Hold the boundary."
"Absolutely no contact. No tracking."
"Her rift can slice a C-rank Awakened in half in a fraction of a second." The rapid sound of shoes scraping the ground came from Lina's side.
"Roger that. Retreating." Late at night.
Only a few emergency lights were on on P2 level.
Allen sat on the ground.
His gaze was fixed on the bottom of the management panel.
Forty-seven minutes.
The black cube finally moved.
A layer peeled away from the garbled text.
A character was revealed.
Just one word.
[Sacrifice] In the lower left corner of the management panel, the dark red oval pattern suddenly contracted.
In the lower right corner, the dark green dot representing network consciousness simultaneously burst into bright light.
Two completely different non-human consciousnesses were staring at the same word in the same second.